Emergency rooms closed, over-capacity, with no plan from Houston government

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia New Democrats are calling on the Houston government to address the dangerous reality of closed rural emergency rooms and long ER wait times.

NDP MLAs wrote a letter to the Health Minister urging action for rural communities. Based on Nova Scotia Health advisories, emergency rooms in Canso, Digby, Shelburne, Lunenburg, and Queens were closed more often than they were open last month.

“When you have a sick child or family member, you shouldn’t have to worry about figuring out where they can get care or how long it will take,” said NDP Health Critic, Dr. Rod Wilson. “When one ER is closed, people have to go to another, and the wait times grow significantly. I’ve seen wait times increase by 10 hours during my shift in an ER when other rural emergency departments aren’t open. That’s an incredibly long time for seniors, for young parents, for anybody to sit and wait in pain. No one is expecting the problem to be solved overnight, but the Houston government needs to be clear with Nova Scotians about the plan for keeping more emergency departments open.”

Despite promising to fix health care, Nova Scotians are waiting in emergency rooms 49 per cent longer since Houston was elected premier in 2021.

In their letter, Wilson and NSNDP Ethics and Accountability Critic Paul Wozney urged the Health Minister to share the government’s plan to improve emergency health care delivery and to provide a timeline for their promised expansion of the Cobequid emergency department.

“Nova Scotians can’t count on their local emergency room being open when they need it. The government has promised to do better, but Nova Scotians are still waiting with no idea how long it’s going to take,” said Wozney, the NDP MLA for Sackville-Cobequid. “In November, sick Nova Scotians were turned away from the Cobequid emergency department because it was so over capacity. Health care workers are burnt out and fed up. No doctor or nurse wants to turn people away — they trained for years to be able to provide the care Nova Scotians need. The Houston government has been elected for years – it’s past time that they tell Nova Scotians what the plan is, and get to work on actually delivering it.”

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